the real reason you can't focus for more than 20 minutes

Summary

the real reason you can’t focus for more than 20 minutes? your plan sucks or your goals suck. usually both. focus isn’t a willpower problem, it’s a planning problem.

the 1330 is the one-page tool I built to fix it. one goal, three strategies, three tactics per strategy, zero excuses. I’ve used it to scale every business I’ve built and pushed thousands of entrepreneurs through it.

the structure:

1. one goal for the quarter. specific, measurable. “100k in revenue at 50% profit,” not “grow the business.”
2. three strategies. each one supports the goal. each one is SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound).
3. three tactics per strategy. the actual moves. ads, outreach, whatever pushes the strategy forward.
4. monthly: pick one tactic from each strategy. by who, by when.
5. weekly: fill in one week at a time. never the whole month. life breaks rigid plans.

personal goals get the same page, but they have to be process goals, not outcome goals. “train 25 times this month,” not “get in shape.” “one date a week,” not “be a better spouse.”

the biggest mistake people make: going way too big on the first 1330. you’re not tripling the business this quarter. start so small it feels embarrassing. that’s where momentum gets built.

30% completion of a real plan beats 100% completion of no plan.

Transcript

why you can’t focus

If you are struggling to stay focused, it is for one of two reasons. Either your plan sucks or your goals suck. And I’m going to go over a tool today that I created that can help you solve both problems.

the 1330: 1 goal, 3 strategies, 3 tactics, 0 excuses

So what we’re going to be going over today is something I call the 1330. Two quick things. I have used this to scale multiple companies myself. I have used this with thousands of entrepreneurs. It is very effective. It will help you get clear and help you stay focused because you’ll know which goals to focus on and what exactly the next step is.

And before we go any further, you probably want to download this. If you do, there is a link in the description of this episode so you can download your own copy and get started filling in the blanks. But without any further ado, let’s get right into it. The 1330 stands for one goal, three strategies, three tactics per strategy, zero excuses.

So what we have is one sheet of paper. Now I know some people listen to the audio version of this. I’m going to do my best to make sure that it makes sense. But what you have in the top half of the page is for the quarter, and the bottom half of the page is for the month. And I’m going to start with the top quarter.

structuring your quarterly plan

So what we’re going to do is first for your quarter, Q2, Q3, Q4, whatever it is, you’re going to set one goal. I normally push entrepreneurs to say, hey, I’m going to make X amount of money with a certain amount of profit, just because that is a very dialed in goal. I want to make a hundred thousand dollars with 50% profit, something along those lines. But in all honesty, you can put anything here for your one goal. You could say, I want to get to a thousand Instagram followers or something.

Whatever your goal is that you think is going to move your business forward this quarter, that’s what you’re going to put into one goal. Now what you’re going to do after that is you have three strategies, and all three of these strategies should support that one goal. And so if you did want to make a hundred thousand dollars this quarter with 50% profit, you would jump down to strategy one.

building SMART strategies

Now what you want to do in each one of these strategies is make sure that it is a SMART goal set within the strategy. So SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Meaning you just want to make sure that it’s very concrete. So in strategy one, if I wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars with 50% profit as my main goal, I might put something like, okay, I want to increase the volume of leads that we get in a quarter by 5%.

Now that checks all the boxes. It’s specific, it’s measurable, it’s attainable, realistic, and it’s time bound because it’s locked to the quarter. If I just said increase lead flow, that’s not specific, right? And if I went the opposite direction and said, hey, I want to increase lead flow by 74%, not very realistic, probably not attainable given the timeframe of a quarter.

aligning tactics to your strategy

So that’s what you want to do. Each one of these strategies is going to point to this singular goal. Now underneath the strategies, each strategy is going to have a tactic. So tactic one, tactic two, and tactic three to support strategy one. Same thing for strategy two, you’ll have three tactics, and same thing for strategy three, you’ll have three tactics, and that is how it’s going to be broken down.

So if I wanted to increase lead flow or number of leads by 5% this quarter, I could put in different tactics like, okay, I’m going to start running Google ads to my newsletter or Facebook ads to my newsletter, something along those lines. I’m going to reach out to more people, get them to subscribe or get them to sign up, so on and so forth. Whatever your tactics are, you should spend a good amount of time going through this and really thinking about, okay, what’s my one goal? What are my three strategies?

And then under those strategies, what are three tactics that support that strategy? Then after you have this set in stone, you now have your overall quarterly marching orders. You can change this. It takes time to get good at executing a 1330, but just know you need to get something on paper.

monthly goals: strategy-linked execution

So you’re actually achieving and you’re actually moving forward and making progress. After that, we move down to the bottom half of the page, which is focused on this month. I’m going to start on the business side. So people know how this works in the business. Say it’s this month, this month you’re like, okay, I’m setting three main goals for the month.

What should they be? How it works with the 1330 is you have these three goals. You should be picking a goal from each strategy: a tactic. So the first goal in business should be strategy one tactic one. And then the next one should be strategy two tactic one. Then strategy three tactic one.

That way amongst the three strategies, you’re hitting the overall goal, all the strategies from every single angle. You’re not focused too much on just marketing efforts, or you’re not focused too much on increasing profitability, whatever you put in your strategies, you’re doing each one of those.

the “by who, by when” rule

And so that’s what you’re going to set as your business goals. Now you’ll notice it’s probably pretty hard to see, but you’ll see that each business goal for the month has by who and by when. Okay. So who’s doing this. If you have a team, it doesn’t always have to be you. Make sure that you know who’s assigned to it and let them know, delegate to them.

And when does it need to be accomplished, because it might need to be accomplished within the first two weeks of the month, or it might need to be accomplished within the first three days. Or maybe they have the full month, or maybe you have the full month to get it done. And that is everything on the business side for the month.

weekly tactics: only plan one week at a time

And then the very bottom of the page, you’ll see that we have weeks laid out. So you’ll start putting in, what are the business tactics I need to do in the first week of this month to start achieving my monthly goals, which support my quarterly goals. That’s what you do. And it’s pretty simple from there.

One quick note on the week one, two, three, four, and five, you only ever fill in one week at a time. One week at a time. The reason being is because life is not perfect. You might not achieve all of the goals. You might have to move something from week one to week two. If you go in and try and fill out every single block, like, hey, here’s what I’m doing week one, here’s what I’m doing week two,

and there’s any kind of mix up, there’s a mistake or you get crunched for time and you can’t accomplish it. You’re going to abandon the plan nine times out of 10. When I see someone abandon the plan, it’s because they’re being too structured. They’re being too rigid. They set goals that are too lofty. They thought that they were robots that could achieve more than they could, but really they couldn’t. So only ever do one week at a time and just know, hey, even if I finish 30% of this quarterly plan, 30% of this 1330, I’m going to be way better off than had I done nothing at all, had no plan for the quarter. So that’s the big thing to know for business.

setting personal process goals

Now I do want to hit on the personal because I think that that’s very important. And you’ll see that that’s the other portion that we are trying to achieve. What we have here are three personal goals for the month. Now we don’t necessarily set this for the quarter, but you can yourself. And here’s the deal with personal goals.

You need to make sure that it is a process goal, not an outcome goal. So for instance, if I were to say, you know, I want a better marriage or I want to be a better father. Those are big gigantic things, right? Those might be goals of yours, but you can’t, like, when is that achieved? Like we have no way of measuring that.

why you need small, measurable actions

We have no way of knowing when that’s accomplished. We all want to be better. We want to show up more in life. We want to work out more. We want to get fitter, but that’s too vague. So what you want to put in your personal goals for every single month is a process goal. So if I wanted to be fitter, just increase my fitness,

I wouldn’t say increase fitness or run a faster mile time, even though you could. I would go to a process goal. Okay. I’m going to train six times per week this month, five times per week this month, something along those lines. I’m going to train 25 times this month. That might be the goal. That’s the process goal.

Same with marriage or being a better father, something like that. Maybe you need to spend more time with your spouse. So the process goal would be, I’m going to go on one date with my significant other once per week for the month. So you’re setting process goals for all of your personal goals.

And then the same story here, you’re going to put in what you need to do this week to start achieving the personal goals. So if I wanted to train 25 times over the course of this month, you know, work out 25 times, then week one, I need to train five times. And that’s what I’m going to be doing. That’s the process goal.

how the 1330 builds unstoppable momentum

So this is the 1330. One goal, three strategies, three tactics per strategy, zero excuses. If you can stick to this, you will be making so much more progress. You will be so focused. And so dialed in. I honestly think this is my biggest secret weapon that has helped me accomplish more than most people, because I get very focused on what I want to accomplish.

And I know that these are the next steps and here’s the reality of it. Just kind of some behind the scenes of someone who’s been doing this for a very long time, filling out forms like this for over a decade. And I say this all the time, you have to go small, smaller than you think. Okay. If you are like, okay, what’s my one goal for this quarter?

I’m going to triple the business. You’re not going to triple the business. You’re just not. And if you are, that means your business is in the infant stages. And eventually that’s not going to happen at some point. So you can’t continually triple your business every single quarter. And if you could, well, you’d be Jeff Bezos after a couple of years, right?

Because you just keep compounding. So be specific, go really, really small with your very first 1330, because when you go small and you actually accomplish it and you fill it out, you’re going to start to build momentum. And you’re going to see that focus was never really a mental problem or any kind of disorder.

The real reason you couldn’t focus is because you didn’t have a good plan. You didn’t have any solid goals. Once you have a one piece of paper that you can pull out every single day and you know exactly what your marching orders are for this day, for the month, for the quarter, you will be making progress fast and you will not have a focus problem anymore.

But in order to do any of this, you’re going to have to try harder.